Prison (1949) - film review

A film director is visited by his erstwhile mathematics teacher, who offers him an idea for a film: life on Earth is Hell, governed not by God, but by the Devil.  The director discusses the idea with a writer, Tomas, who finds himself living out the scenario a few months later.  Depressed, Tomas invites his wife to join him in a suicide pact; when she walks out on him, he hooks up with a young prostitute, Birgitta, who has just run away from her pimp boyfriend soon after the latter killed her newborn baby.  Although they try to make a new start together, Tomas and Birgitta are both haunted by their recent past...

In Prison, an early experimental work made on a ludicrously small budget, director Ingmar Bergman begins to explore themes of existence, identity and faith which would become major preoccupations in later years.  The film’s budgetary restrictions – which limited the shooting period to 17 days, kept the number of sets to an absolute minimum and resulted in most of the cast and crew being short-changed (Bergman himself earned nothing) – are more than evident and emphasise the film’s jarring unevenness and artificiality.  Bergman appears to be far less concerned with telling a coherent story than in playing with the art of cinema, developing techniques and exploring ideas which would serve as a starting point for his subsequent films.  Consequently, its appeal to non-Bergman enthusiasts is limited.

Despite its rough and ready feel, Prison does have a striking poetic sense, addressing existentialist notions in a way that is both alluring and disturbing.  Göran Strindberg’s high contrast (almost film noir) photography has an expressionist flavour which adds to the dream-like illusion, blurring the boundaries between the real world and the world of the imagination, prompting us to question how much of what we see is reality.  The recurring notion of a film-within-a-film is an oft-used existentialist device, reminiscent of an idea explored by H.G. Wells in his 1923 novel The Dream, where the entire life of one individual is experienced as a single dream by another.

Perhaps the most obvious failing of this film is its weak characterisation.  A combination of mediocre writing and stilted, expressionless acting performances prevents any of the main characters from being convincing or sympathetic.  In a more naturalistic film, this would be a very serious failing, but in a film which is as stylised as this, it’s less of an issue.  The characters are no more than shorthand stereotypes (writer / wife / prostitute / pimp) which Bergman uses to play out some ideas, rather like a child playing a game with a collection of nondescript dolls.  The bland dialogue and equally bland acting adds to the dream-like character of the film.

There are hints that Bergman is aware of the limitations of his characterisation (for example, the reference to the phoney dialogue in the scene where a film is being recorded), and he plays on this – suggesting possibly that human beings are just marionettes of some malignant cosmic puppeteer.   The sequence in which Tomas and Birgitta sit and watch a farcical silent film seems to reinforce this impression; is the whole point of their existence merely to provide entertainment for some higher spiritual entity – the Devil maybe...?

© James Travers 2007

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